Текст книги "Haunted"

Автор книги: Charles Michael «Chuck» Palahniuk

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Contents

Title Page

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

The Poems

The Stories

About the Author

Also by Chuck Palahniuk

Copyright Page

There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

“The Masque of the Red Death”

by Edgar Allan Poe

Guinea Pigs

This was supposed to be a writers' retreat. It was supposed to be safe.

An isolated writers' colony, where we could work,

run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier,

until it wasn't.

And we were supposed to write poetry. Pretty poetry.

This crowd of us, his gifted students,

locked away from the ordinary world for three months.

And we called each other the “Matchmaker.” And the “Missing Link.”

Or “Mother Nature.” Silly labels. Free-association names.

The same way—when you were little—you invented names for the plants and

animals in your world. You called peonies—sticky with nectar and crawling with

ants—the “ant flower.” You called collies: Lassie Dogs.

But even now, the same way you still call someone “that man with one leg.”

Or, “you know, the black girl . . .”

We called each other:

The “Earl of Slander.”

Or “Sister Vigilante.”

The names we earned, based on our stories. The names we gave each other,

based on our life instead of our family:

“Lady Baglady.”

“Agent Tattletale.”

Names based on our sins instead of our jobs:

“Saint Gut-Free.”

And the “Duke of Vandals.”

Based on our faults and crimes. The opposite of superhero names.

Silly names for real people. As if you cut open a rag doll and found inside:

Real intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. A lot of hot, sticky blood.

And we were supposed to write short stories. Funny short stories.

Too many of us, locked away from the world for one whole

spring, summer, winter, autumn—one whole season of that year.

It doesn't matter who we were as people, not to old Mr. Whittier.

But he didn't say this at first.

To Mr. Whittier, we were lab animals. An experiment.

But we didn't know.

No, this was only a writers' retreat until it was too late for us to be anything,

except his victims.

1

When the bus pulls to the corner where Comrade Snarky had agreed to wait, she stands there in an army-surplus flak jacket—dark olive-green—and baggy camouflage pants, the cuffs rolled up to show infantry boots. A suitcase on either side of her. With a black beret pulled down tight on her head, she could be anyone.

“The rule was . . . ,” Saint Gut-Free says into the microphone that hangs above his steering wheel.

And Comrade Snarky says, “Fine.” She leans down to unbuckle a luggage tag off one suitcase. Comrade Snarky tucks the luggage tag in her olive-green pocket, then lifts the second suitcase and steps up into the bus. With one suitcase still on the curb, abandoned, orphaned, alone, Comrade Snarky sits down and says, “Okay.”

She says, “Drive.”

We were all leaving notes, that morning. Before dawn. Sneaking out on tiptoe with our suitcase down dark stairs, then along dark streets with only garbage trucks for company. We never did see the sun come up.

Sitting next to Comrade Snarky, the Earl of Slander was writing something in a pocket notepad, his eyes flicking between her and his pen.

And, leaning over sideways to look, Comrade Snarky says, “My eyes are green, not brown, and my hair is naturally this color auburn.” She watches as he writes green, then says, “And I have a little red rose tattooed on my butt cheek.” Her eyes settle on the silver tape recorder peeking out of his shirt pocket, the little-mesh microphone of it, and she says, “Don't write dyed hair. Women either lift or tint the color of their hair.”

Near them sits Mr. Whittier, where his spotted, trembling hands can grip the folded chrome frame of his wheelchair. Beside him sits Mrs. Clark, her breasts so big they almost rest in her lap.

Eyeing them, Comrade Snarky leans into the gray flannel sleeve of the Earl of Slander. She says, “Purely ornamental, I assume. And of no nutritive value . . .”

That was the day we missed our last sunrise.

At the next dark street corner, where Sister Vigilante stands waiting, she holds up her thick black wristwatch, saying, “We agreed on four-thirty-five.” She taps the watch face with her other hand, saying, “It is now four-thirty-nine . . .”

Sister Vigilante, she brought a fake-leather case with a strap handle, a flap that closed with a snap to protect the Bible inside. A purse handmade to lug around the Word of God.

All over the city, we waited for the bus. At street corners or bus-stop benches, until Saint Gut-Free drove up. Mr. Whittier sitting near the front with Mrs. Clark. The Earl of Slander. Comrade Snarky and Sister Vigilante.

Saint Gut-Free pulls the lever to fold open the door, and standing on the curb is little Miss Sneezy. The sleeves of her sweater lumpy with dirty tissues stuffed inside. She lifts her suitcase and it rattles loud as popcorn in a microwave oven. With every step up the stairs into the bus, the suitcase rattles loud as far-off machine-gun fire, and Miss Sneezy looks at us and says, “My pills.” She gives the suitcase a loud shake and says, “A whole three months' supply . . .”

That's why the rule about only so much luggage. So we would all fit.

The only rule was one bag per person, but Mr. Whittier didn't say how big or what kind.

When Lady Baglady climbed on board, she wore a diamond ring the size of a popcorn kernel, her hand holding a leash, the leash dragging a leather suitcase on little wheels.

Waving her fingers to make her ring sparkle, Lady Baglady says, “It's my late husband, cremated and made into a three-carat diamond . . .”

At that, Comrade Snarky leans over the notepad where the Earl of Slander is writing, and she says, “Facelift is one word.”

A few blocks later, after a couple traffic lights and around some corners waits Chef Assassin, carrying a molded aluminum suitcase with, inside, all his white elastic underpants and T-shirts and socks folded down to squares tight as origami. Plus a matched set of chef's knives. Under that, his aluminum suitcase is solid-packed with banded stacks of money, all of it hundred-dollar bills. All of it so heavy he used both hands to lift it into the bus.

Down another street, under a bridge and around the far side of a park, the bus pulled to the curb where no one seemed to wait. There the man we called the “Missing Link” stepped out of the bushes near the curb. Balled in his arms, he carried a black garbage bag, torn and leaking plaid flannel shirts.

Looking at the Missing Link, but talking sideways to the Earl of Slander, Comrade Snarky said, “His beard looks like something Hemingway might've shot . . .”

The dreaming world, they'd think we were crazy. Those people still in bed, they'd be asleep another hour, then washing their faces, under their arms, and between their legs, before going to the same work they did every day. Living that same life, every day.

Those people would cry to find us gone, but they would cry, too, if we were boarding a ship to start a new life across some ocean. Emigrating. Pioneers.

This morning, we were astronauts. Explorers. Awake while they slept.

These people would cry, but then they would go back to waiting tables, painting houses, programming computers.

At our next stop, Saint Gut-Free swung open the doors, and a cat ran up the steps and down the aisle between the seats of the bus. Behind the cat came Director Denial, saying, “His name is Cora.” The cat's name was Cora Reynolds. “I didn't name him,” said Director Denial, the tweed blazer and skirt she wore frosted with cat hair. One lapel swollen out from her chest.

“A shoulder holster,” says Comrade Snarky, leaning close to tell the tape recorder in the Earl of Slander's shirt pocket.

All of this—whispering in the dark, leaving notes, keeping secret—it was our adventure.

If you were planning to be stranded on a desert island for three months, what would you bring along?

Let's say all your food and water would be provided, or so you think.

Let's say you can only bring along one suitcase because there will be a lot of you, and the bus taking you all to the desert island is only so big.

What would you pack in your suitcase?

Saint Gut-Free brought boxes of pork-rind snacks and dried cheese puffs, his fingers and chin orange with the salt dust. One bony hand gripping the steering wheel, he tilted each box to pour the snacks into his thin face.

Sister Vigilante brought a shopping bag of clothes with a satchel bag set in the top.

Leaning over her own huge breasts, holding them like a child in her arms, Mrs. Clark asked, did Sister Vigilante bring along a human head?

And Sister Vigilante opened the satchel far enough to show the three holes of a black bowling ball, saying, “My hobby . . .”

Comrade Snarky looks from the Earl of Slander scribbling into his notepad, then looks at Sister Vigilante's braided-tight black hair, not one strand pulling loose from its pins.

“That,” Comrade Snarky says, “is tinted hair.”

At our next stop, Agent Tattletale stood with a video camera held to one eye, filming the bus as it pulled to the curb. He brought a stack of business cards he passed out to prove he was a private detective. With his video camera held as a mask covering half his face, he filmed us, walking down the aisle to an empty seat at the back, blinding everyone with his spotlight.

A city block later, the Matchmaker climbed on board, tracking horse shit on his cowboy boots. A straw cowboy hat in his hands and a duffel bag hung over one shoulder, he sat and peeled back his window and spit brown tobacco juice down the brushed-steel side of the bus.

This is what we brought along for three months outside of the world. Agent Tattletale, his video camera. Sister Vigilante, her bowling ball. Lady Baglady, her diamond ring. This is what we'd need to write our stories. Miss Sneezy, her pills and tissues. Saint Gut-Free, his snack food. The Earl of Slander, his notebook and tape recorder.

Chef Assassin, his knives.

In the dim light of the bus, we all spied on Mr. Whittier, the workshop organizer. Our teacher. You could see the spotted shiny dome of his scalp under the few gray hairs combed across. The button-down collar of his shirt stood up, a starched white fence around his thin, spotted neck.

“The people you're sneaking away from,” Mr. Whittier would say, “they don't want you enlightened. They want to know what to expect.”

Mr. Whittier would tell you, “You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.”

The people who really, actually loved us, Mr. Whittier said they'd beg us to go. To fulfill our dream. Practice our craft. And they would love us when we all came back.

In three months.

The little bit of life we'd each gamble.

We'd risk.

This much time, we'd bet on our own ability to create some masterpiece. A short story or poem or screenplay or memoir that would make sense of our life. A masterpiece that would buy our way out of slavery to a husband or a parent or a corporation. That would earn our freedom.

All of us, driving along the empty streets in the dark. Miss Sneezy fishes a damp tissue out of her sweater sleeve and blows her nose. She sniffs and says, “Sneaking out this way, I was so afraid of getting caught.” Tucking the tissue back inside her cuff, she says, “I feel just like . . . Anne Frank.”

Comrade Snarky digs the luggage tag out of her jacket pocket, the remains of her abandoned suitcase. Her abandoned life. And, turning the tag over and over in her hand, still looking at it, Comrade Snarky says, “The way I see it . . .” She says, “Anne Frank had life pretty good.”

And Saint Gut-Free, his mouth full of corn chips, watching us all in the rearview mirror, chewing salt and fat, he says, “How's that?”

Director Denial pets her cat. Mrs. Clark pets her breasts. Mr. Whittier, his chrome wheelchair.

Under a streetlight, on a corner up ahead, the dark outline of another would-be writer waits.

“At least Anne Frank,” Comrade Snarky said, “never had to tour with her book . . .”

And Saint Gut-Free hits the air brakes and cranks the steering wheel to pull over.

Landmarks

A Poem About Saint Gut-Free

“Here's the job I left to come here,” the Saint says. “And the life I gave up.”

He used to drive a tour bus.

Saint Gut-Free onstage, his arms folded across his chest—so skinny

his hands can touch in the middle of his back

There stands Saint Gut-Free, with a single coat of skin painted on his skeleton.

His collarbones loop out from his chest, big as grab handles.

His ribs show through his white T-shirt, and his belt—instead of his butt—keeps up his blue jeans.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

the colors of houses and sidewalks, street signs and parked cars,

wipe sideways across his face. A mask of heavy traffic. Vans and trucks.

He says, “That job, driving tour bus . . .”

It was all Japanese, Germans, Koreans, all with English as a second language, with phrase

books clutched in one hand, nodding and smiling at whatever he told the

microphone as he steered the bus around corners, down streets, past the houses of

movie stars or extra-bloody murders, apartments where rock stars had overdosed.

Every day the same tour, the same mantra of murder, movie stars, accidents. Places

where peace treaties got signed. Where presidents had slept.

Until that day Saint Gut-Free stops in front of a picket-fence ranch house, just a detour

to see if his parents' four-door Buick is there, if this is still where they live,

where pacing the front yard is a man, pushing a lawn mower.

There, into his microphone, the Saint tells his air-conditioned cargo:

“You're looking at Saint Mel.”

And, his father squinting at the wall of tinted bus windows,

“The Patron Saint of Shame and Rage,” says Gut-Free.

After that, every day, the tour includes “The Shrine of Saint Mel and Saint Betty.”

Saint Betty being the Patron Saint of Public Humiliation.

Parked in front of his sister's condo highrise, Saint Gut-Free points to

some high-up floor. Up there, the shrine of Saint Wendy.

“The Patron Saint of Therapeutic Abortion.”

Parked in front of his own apartment,

he tells the bus, “There's the shrine of Saint Gut-Free,”

the Saint himself, his pigeon shoulders, rubber-band lips, and baggy shirt,

reflected even smaller in the rearview mirror.

“The Patron Saint of Masturbation.”

While each seat in his bus, nodding heads, craning their necks, they look to see

something divine.

Guts

A Story by Saint Gut-Free

Inhale.

Take in as much air as you can.

This story should last about as long as you can hold your breath, and then just a little bit longer. So listen as fast as you can.

A friend of mine, when he was thirteen years old he heard about “pegging.” This is when a guy gets banged up the butt with a dildo. Stimulate the prostate gland hard enough, and the rumor is you can have explosive hands-free orgasms. At that age, this friend's a little sex maniac. He's always jonesing for a better way to get his rocks off. He goes out to buy a carrot and some petroleum jelly. To conduct a little private research. Then he pictures how it's going to look at the supermarket checkstand, the lonely carrot and petroleum jelly rolling down the conveyor belt toward the grocery-store cashier. All the shoppers waiting in line, watching. Everyone seeing the big evening he has planned.

So, my friend, he buys milk and eggs and sugar and a carrot, all the ingredients for a carrot cake. And Vaseline.

Like he's going home to stick a carrot cake up his butt.

At home, he whittles the carrot into a blunt tool. He slathers it with grease and grinds his ass down on it. Then—nothing. No orgasm. Nothing happens except it hurts.

Then this kid, his mom yells it's suppertime. She says to come down, right now.

He works the carrot out and stashes the slippery, filthy thing in the dirty clothes under his bed.

After dinner, he goes to find the carrot and it's gone. All his dirty clothes, while he ate dinner, his mom grabbed them all to do laundry. No way could she not find the carrot, carefully shaped with a paring knife from her kitchen, still shiny with lube and stinky.

This friend of mine, he waits months under a black cloud, waiting for his folks to confront him. And they never do. Ever. Even now he's grown up, that invisible carrot hangs over every Christmas dinner, every birthday party. Every Easter-egg hunt with his kids, his parents' grandkids, that ghost carrot is hovering over all of them.

That something too awful to name.

People in France have a phrase: “Spirit of the Stairway.” In French: Esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. Say you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party . . .

As you start down the stairway, then—magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put-down.

That's the Spirit of the Stairway.

The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.

Some deeds are too low to even get a name. Too low to even get talked about.

Looking back, kid-psych experts, school counselors now say that most of the last peak in teen suicide was kids trying to choke while they beat off. Their folks would find them, a towel twisted around the kid's neck, the towel tied to the rod in their bedroom closet, their kid dead. Dead sperm everywhere. Of course the folks cleaned up. They put some pants on their kid. They made it look . . . better. Intentional at least. The regular kind of sad, teen suicide.

Another friend of mine, a kid from school, his older brother in the navy said how guys in the Middle East jack off different than we do here. This brother was stationed in some camel country where the public market sells what could be fancy letter-openers. Each fancy tool is just a thin rod of polished brass or silver, maybe as long as your hand, with a big tip at one end, either a big metal ball or the kind of fancy carved handle you'd see on a sword. This navy brother says how Arab guys get their dick hard and then insert this metal rod inside the whole length of their boner. They jack off with the rod inside, and it makes getting off so much better. More intense.

It's this big brother who travels around the world, sending back French phrases. Russian phrases. Helpful jack-off tips.

After this, the little brother, one day he doesn't show up at school. That night, he calls to ask if I'll pick up his homework for the next couple weeks. Because he's in the hospital.

He's got to share a room with old people getting their guts worked on. He says how they all have to share the same television. All he's got for privacy is a curtain. His folks don't come and visit. On the phone, he says how right now his folks could just kill his big brother in the navy.

On the phone, the kid says how—the day before—he was just a little stoned. At home in his bedroom, he was flopped on the bed. He was lighting a candle and flipping through some old porno magazines, getting ready to beat off. This is after he's heard from his navy brother. That helpful hint about how Arabs beat off. The kid looks around for something that might do the job. A ballpoint pen's too big. A pencil's too big and rough. But, dripped down the side of the candle, there's a thin, smooth ridge of wax that just might work. With just the tip of one finger, this kid snaps the long ridge of wax off the candle. He rolls it smooth between the palms of his hands. Long and smooth and thin.

Stoned and horny, he slips it down inside, deeper and deeper into the piss slit of his boner. With a good hank of the wax still poking out the top, he gets to work.

Even now, he says those Arab guys are pretty damn smart. They've totally reinvented jacking off. Flat on his back in bed, things are getting so good this kid can't keep track of the wax. He's one good squeeze from shooting his wad when the wax isn't sticking out anymore.

The thin wax rod, it's slipped inside. All the way inside. So deep inside he can't even feel the lump of it inside his piss tube.

From downstairs, his mom shouts it's suppertime. She says to come down, right now. This wax kid and the carrot kid are different people, but we all live pretty much the same life.

It's after dinner when the kid's guts start to hurt. It's wax, so he figured maybe it would just melt inside him and he'd piss it out. Now his back hurts. His kidneys. He can't stand straight.

This kid talking on the phone from his hospital bed, in the background you can hear bells ding, people screaming. Game shows.

The X-rays show the truth, something long and thin, bent double inside his bladder. This long, thin V inside him, it's collecting all the minerals in his piss. It's getting bigger and more rough, coated with crystals of calcium, it's bumping around, ripping up the soft lining of his bladder, blocking his piss from getting out. His kidneys are backed up. What little that leaks out his dick is red with blood.

This kid, with his folks, his whole family, them looking at the black X-ray with the doctor and the nurses standing there, the big V of wax glowing white for everybody to see, he has to tell the truth. The way Arabs get off. What his big brother wrote him from the navy.

On the phone, right now, he starts to cry.

They paid for the bladder operation with his college fund. One stupid mistake, and now he'll never be a lawyer.

Sticking stuff inside yourself. Sticking yourself inside stuff. A candle in your dick or your head in a noose, we knew it was going to be big trouble.

What got me in trouble, I called it Pearl Diving. This meant whacking off underwater, sitting on the bottom at the deep end of my parents' swimming pool. With one deep breath, I'd kick my way to the bottom and slip off my swim trucks. I'd sit down there for two, three, four minutes.

Just from jacking off, I had huge lung capacity. If I had the house to myself, I'd do this all afternoon. After I'd finally pump out my stuff, my sperm, it would hang there in big, fat, milky gobs.

After that was more diving, to catch it all. To collect it and wipe each handful in a towel. That's why it was called Pearl Diving. Even with chlorine, there was my sister to worry about. Or, Christ Almighty, my mom.

That used to be my worst fear in the world: my teenage virgin sister, thinking she's just getting fat, then giving birth to a two-headed retard baby. Both the heads looking just like me. Me, the father AND the uncle.

In the end, it's never what you worry about that gets you.

The best part of Pearl Diving was the inlet port for the swimming-pool filter and the circulation pump. The best part was getting naked and sitting on it.

As the French would say: Who doesn't like getting their butt sucked?

Still, one minute you're just a kid getting off, and the next minute you'll never be a lawyer.

One minute, I'm settling on the pool bottom, and the sky is wavy, light blue through eight feet of water above my head. The world is silent except for the heartbeat in my ears. My yellow-striped swim trunks are looped around my neck for safe keeping, just in case a friend, a neighbor, anybody shows up to ask why I skipped football practice. The steady suck of the pool inlet hole is lapping at me, and I'm grinding my skinny white ass around on that feeling.

One minute, I've got enough air, and my dick's in my hand. My folks are gone at their work and my sister's got ballet. Nobody's supposed to be home for hours.

My hand brings me right to getting off, and I stop. I swim up to catch another big breath. I dive down and settle on the bottom.

I do this again and again.

This must be why girls want to sit on your face. The suction is like taking a dump that never ends. My dick hard and getting my butt eaten out, I do not need air. My heartbeat in my ears, I stay under until bright stars of light start worming around in my eyes. My legs straight out, the back of each knee rubbed raw against the concrete bottom. My toes are turning blue, my toes and fingers wrinkled from being so long in the water.

And then I let it happen. The big white gobs start spouting. The pearls.

It's then I need some air. But when I go to kick off against the bottom, I can't. I can't get my feet under me. My ass is stuck.

Emergency paramedics will tell you that every year about 150 people get stuck this way, sucked by a circulation pump. Get your long hair caught, or your ass, and you're going to drown. Every year, tons of people do. Most of them in Florida.

People just don't talk about it. Not even French people talk about EVERYTHING.

Getting one knee up, getting one foot tucked under me, I get to half standing when I feel the tug against my butt. Getting my other foot under me, I kick off against the bottom. I'm kicking free, not touching the concrete, but not getting to the air, either.

Still kicking water, thrashing with both arms, I'm maybe halfway to the surface but not going higher. The heartbeat inside my head getting loud and fast.

The bright sparks of light crossing and crisscrossing my eyes, I turn and look back . . . but it doesn't make sense. This thick rope, some kind of snake, blue-white and braided with veins, has come up out of the pool drain and it's holding on to my butt. Some of the veins are leaking blood, red blood that looks black underwater and drifts away from little rips in the pale skin of the snake. The blood trails away, disappearing in the water, and inside the snake's thin blue-white skin you can see lumps of some half-digested meal.

That's the only way this makes sense. Some horrible sea monster, a sea serpent, something that's never seen the light of day, it's been hiding in the dark bottom of the pool drain, waiting to eat me.

So . . . I kick at it, at the slippery, rubbery, knotted skin and veins of it, and more of it seems to pull out of the pool drain. It's maybe as long as my leg now, but still holding tight around my butthole. With another kick, I'm an inch closer to getting another breath. Still feeling the snake tug at my ass, I'm an incher closer to my escape.

Knotted inside the snake, you can see corn and peanuts. You can see a long bright-orange ball. It's the kind of horse-pill vitamin my dad makes me take, to help put on weight. To get a football scholarship. With extra iron and omega-3 fatty acids.

It's seeing that vitamin pill that saves my life.

It's not a snake. It's my large intestine, my colon pulled out of me. What doctors call “prolapsed.” It's my guts sucked into the drain.

Paramedics will tell you a swimming-pool pump pulls eighty gallons of water every minute. That's about four hundred pounds of pressure. The big problem is, we're all connected together inside. Your ass is just the far end of your mouth. If I let go, the pump keeps working—unraveling my insides—until it's got my tongue. Imagine taking a four-hundred-pound shit, and you can see how this might turn you inside out.

What I can tell you is, your guts don't feel much pain. Not the way your skin feels pain. The stuff you're digesting, doctors call it fecal matter. Higher up is chyme, pockets of a thin runny mess studded with corn and peanuts and round green peas.

That's all this soup of blood and corn, shit and sperm and peanuts, floating around me. Even with my guts unraveling out my ass, me holding on to what's left, even then my first want is to somehow get my swimsuit back on.

God forbid my folks see my dick.

My one hand holding a fist around my ass, my other hand snags my yellow-striped swim trunks and pulls them from around my neck. Still, getting into them is impossible.

You want to feel your intestines, go buy a pack of those lambskin condoms. Take one out and unroll it. Pack it with peanut butter. Smear it with petroleum jelly and hold it underwater. Then try to tear it. Try to pull it in half. It's too tough and rubbery. It's so slimy you can't hold on.

A lambskin condom, that's just plain old intestine.

Now, you can see what I'm up against.

You let go for a second, and you're gutted.

You swim for the surface, for a breath, and you're gutted.

You don't swim, and you drown.

It's a choice between being dead right now or a minute from right now.

What my folks will find after work is a big naked fetus, curled in on itself. Floating in the cloudy water of their backyard pool. Tethered to the bottom by a thick rope of veins and twisted guts. The opposite of a kid hanging himself to death while he jacks off. This is the baby they brought home from the hospital thirteen years ago. Here's the kid they hoped would snag a football scholarship and get an M.B.A. Who'd care for them in their old age. Here's all their hopes and dreams. Floating here, naked and dead. All around him, big milky pearls of wasted sperm.

Either that or my folks will find me wrapped in a bloody towel, collapsed halfway from the pool to the kitchen telephone, the ragged, torn scrap of my guts still hanging out the leg of my yellow-striped swim trunks.

What even the French won't talk about.

That big brother in the navy, he taught us one other good phrase. A Russian phrase. The way we say, “I need that like I need a hole in my head,” Russian people say, “I need that like I need teeth in my asshole.”

Mnye etoh nadoh kahk zoobee v zadnetze.

Those stories you hear, about how animals caught in a trap will chew off their leg, well, any coyote would tell you a couple bites beats the hell out of being dead.

Hell . . . even if you're Russian, someday you just might want those teeth.

Otherwise, what you have to do is—you have to twist around. You hook one elbow behind your knee and pull that leg up into your face. You bite and snap at your own ass. You run out of air, and you will chew through anything to get that next breath.